Why I can't find the solution to life: Secrets & an ending era.

I feel as if for the past months I've been distant and as a result have neglected posting any of my experiences. Well, what can I say? A new year has passed, I spent the holidays with John's family as always, being sure to take my fill of the annual lutefisk feast. Finally a holiday passed without his mother (or any other family members for that matter) berating me about when John and I will finally marry and produce half-Norwegian, half-French Canadian (and Native) babies. I think John must have said something to them to make them not, he knows how uncomfortable it makes me. From that the new year passed, with a silent house (besides John and I), as all of our boarders have finally left and I have felt no need to replace them. We played our annual scrabble games (I won with a thudding defeat this year, unlike the previous) and relaxed with yummy delights and John mellow double bass tunes.

I'm finishing up my work at the university this semester, and after that I don't exactly know what my plans will be, or I should say "our" plans since John has already voiced his full preparation to pick up and move with, to wherever life takes me. I've already had some offers, on coasts doing research or otherwise. They seem . . . fulfilling. However, I really don't know. I kind of just want to take some time off a few months so that I don't have to think about . . . anything. Eh, whatever. I'm sure in the coming months everything will become quite clear. Maybe? Hopefully?

On the other note, if you didn't realize it from my statement about the empty house and my lack of boarders, with the holidays my brother finally left our presence. He's went back to Seattle to reclaim his dusty house and own squeaky (and in his words, more comfortable) bed. I was partially relieved, but not because I disliked my brother as a boarder. He was actually quite welcomed as a breath of fresh air from our past occupants. What I did despise were the constant telephone calls from his neurotic girlfriend (even though, she's actually really neat), because yes, Sep has (or maybe had by now) a girlfriend of many, many, many months that I didn't discover until his accident. It was quite a secret when it came out . . . makes me wonder what else he's hidden. Hm?

Why freeloading from your generous sister is such a crime: Let's go to Baltimore!

I've kind of let this blog go loose. I suppose I've gotten too busy, what with the hectic school semester and my brother still freeloading off of my generosity. I'm taking a break for this week (starting right now) and going on holiday to Baltimore (or more like John's going to visit his sister and I'm tagging along). We'll see how this goes . . . I'll write more later . . . promise . . . eh.

Released.

My brother, Sep, has finally been released from his hospital stay, to go out and rejoin the rest of society. I have to say I haven't ever heard him so ecstatic during a phone call before. I guess that's what weekly hospital meals will do to you. I first thing he did when he got out, apparently, was have our other brother Noel drive him to get a steak. I don't think I've ever seen Sep eat steak. He's more of a broccoli and mushroom kind of person.

Anyways, he's flying out here this Sunday to stay indefinitely, as of now. He hasn't exactly planned what he wants to do with his life now, and is still mandatorily recovering with his job, so why not? But . . . uh, hopefully, he doesn't plan on eating steak here. I don't do steak.

Pavement? I prefer dirt roads, actually.

I saw Pavement last night, which basically equalled amazing and a notable mention, but I did happen to consume too much alcohol in moments of frivolity. So, I suppose now I'm going to make some strong coffee and shower vigorously, again. Concerts somehow always make me feel unclean.

Sweaty-sweat-sweat-mess.

I've got a fancy luncheon to go to today. I've got to go change into my fancy shoes (i.e. a purple cocktail dress) and then run up the hill on campus to get there. So basically, I'm going to get all gussied up and forage my way up some hilly terrain in 90 degrees and 95% humidity. By the time I get there, I'm going to be a sweaty-sweat mess anyways. So whats the bother? Well, I'm going to have to put on my extra-strength deodorant and get ready for this mess. Ugh.

Side note. DBT, in two weeks. This makes my day a little brighter.

I wish I could eat this everyday!

Why can't cake (and more importantly, chocolate mousse cake) be part of the major food groups of nutrition? One: it tastes wonderful. Two: it feels like you are eating something wonderful. Three: it make your tummy feel like you ate something wonderful. Therefore, in all senses of logic it should be wonderfully healthy.

Of course, my logic is not exactly the most reliable. I would also eat donuts for dinner if John would let me. I suppose I should stop binging on deserts and get to making some real food. Something with spinach and other moderately tasteful green things. I will say I have eaten some delicious real food in my lifetime, but still nothing compares to chocolate mousse cake . . . or donuts.

Comatose, Brain Damage, and Boredom: Why my life craves jellybeans.

So, where do I begin? First, two week ago on August 6, Septimus finally woke up. I was ecstatic, naturally, as any sister would be regarding a brother's first semi-conscious moment in nearly a month. Three days later, he even began to lift from the semi-drugged state he was in when he first woke up. His eyes cleared from the morphine (or morphine knock-off) glaze and he started to do and say things resembling his old personality. He's in inpatient rehab now in Seattle and calls me everyday to tell me of his progress since I had to leave a week ago for the start of the new semester. It's odd to think of . . . Septimus, easily my favorite brother, had to become seriously injured before he would call me with any frequency. What does this say about him? Maybe he does have brain damage?

Anyways, life back in the mid continent is . . . to say the least, boring. I thought, oh, maybe things would pick up ever since leaving the life of hospitals and wound gauze and weird bodily fluids that come out of tummies, but it hasn't. I arrived home and slept. It felt like I slept for two days straight. John even unpacked my suitcase and did my laundry without my knowledge, I was so out of it. I guess I had wound myself up quite a bit spending every waking possible moment with Sep that I kind of went catatonic for a while when I knew I would have to anymore.

Well, on a lighter note, after I woke up from the deep-sleep, I binged on two of the best treats. The first being jellybeans! and the second being flan!

What can I say? I had been craving jellybeans for weeks . . . and flan? Who doesn't love flan? I think its the texture. I find it irresistible. This one turned out perfectly . . . so I gobbled it up.

Back, eh?

Well, I'm back. No more Seattle. No more hospitals. No more readjusting wound gauze. But I guess now it's back to another semester. Woot, eh?

Crash, Burn, and then Crash again: Why I reget most things in my life?

John just took me out for ice cream as an attempt to cork my muddled feelings towards my eldest brother. It turns out that, after a long, taxing, uncomfortable conversation with him, we will not be staying with him and his wife in Seattle. Instead we will be staying at my more laid-back middle brother Noel's pad. He's out of town for the summer, but is going to let us crash. So where I would normally bake myself into oblivion after such a hassle, John fixed everything for me. Grape and caramel are always the solutions to happiness.

So yeah, sorting that out has been a pain, but a little ice cream and sweetness sorted everything out.

Seattle? Again?

So, yeah. Septimus was declared stable enough to be transferred up to Seattle, where he will undergo intensive inpatient rehabilitation. Pretty sweet for him, though I doubt he realizes it yet due to the extensive drugs still running through his system. For me, I just keep questioning my sanity in actually, willingly, booking my flight to the northeast and calling my eldest brother (and by-far the most perturbing) to say that John and I would be spending the rest of the summer term with him. Please, lob me over the head now.

On the plus side, I just found out that sometime in the next year's future The Strokes will be releasing a new album. So, at least I have to wait for in the future.

Still in Colorado, waiting.

I am still in Colorado, waiting. For the most part, I have still been spending my day times hanging around waiting rooms, cafeteria nooks, and dormant hallways, as a way to pass the time I am not spending visiting my unconscious drugged-out brother. When I am not a hangabout, I am sleeping via pill on the lumpy bed at one of John's relatives holiday cabins in the mountains. I suppose I shouldn't complain about since, staying at the cabin in the woods makes it so I don't have to pay for a hotel bed that wouldn't rank much higher on the comfort scale.

On the plus side, I am getting some great mountain time in that I would have otherwise been without. This weekend, I'm going mountain biking with some old college friends, and well, I'm hoping sometime next week to get out on the water. Otherwise, I will be stuck on the inside in the perfectly filtered sterile air of the hospital. Dreary, I know.

A flight and a kayak.

So yeah. It has been a . . . say. . . frustrating four days since my last post of photographs and wishes of music festivals. Later that evening, I received a phone call from informing me, that as my brother's emergency contact, I was being notified that he was in critical condition after sustaining injuries during an automobile accident, such that he was airlifted to the nearest trauma center in Colorado. Naturally, all of this news hit me at once, namely, because I hadn't spoken to Septimus in weeks, only vaguely remembering him mentioning that he would be Colorado in early July. So, there I was, only half unpacked from my latest adventure, running madly about the house throwing my suitcase contents back in place, while John, the dear, booked us the next available flight.

A plane ride and a rental car later, I'm sitting in an ICU waiting room being bored to death. Septimus has made a turnabout towards recovery, my other brothers in Seattle keep calling, harassing me about not being responsible enough to notify them, which was done purposefully to prevent an unwelcomed "hospital reunion" that my frazzled nerves would not have withstood.

So yeah, I might not make it to Pitchfork this year and well, I'll be crossing most other adventures off of my to-do list. Of course, I know it might not seem sisterly of me, but I might try and squeeze in some white-water kayaking while I'm here, something I think my brother might appreciate.

A brief overview.

Here are a few photographs to sate your curiosity:

I might post more later . . . or I might not. I'm leaving for Pitchfork in like a week, so I might get a bit caught in the rapidness of my life, as I always seem to do.

Back from the West.

Well, what can I say? I arrived back home two days ago deeply tanned, sunburned, and completely worn down. It took me yesterday (and most of today) to recover. Trip was awesome. Hiking was strenuous. Camping was exciting. John drove (mostly) and I picked out the soundtracks of our journey. Took a lot of photographs that if I ever get around to it will be posted . . . at some point. Wore out my hiking boots such that I'm going to have to go and have them resoled. Anyways, I just thought I'd, you know, let you know I'm not dead.

An ending that, naturally, comes with a vacation.

Wow. In another week, one more semester, in a long succession of semesters, will be complete. Classes will have ended. Finals will be over. I won't have to worry about another office hour for nearly three months. Also, for once I'm not devoting the whole of my summer break to work. I'm going on vacation, an actual vacation, where all I do is mope about relaxing and drinking frilly mojitos. The thought of it makes me jitter with anticipation. I know I travel quite a bit anyway, for work or family or holiday, whatever reason sharing a thought out agenda, but there's something about going somewhere without strict purpose that brings joy to my heart. I don't know exactly where or how I will be vacationing (as of the moment, I'm thinking a southwest road trip) but the one known is that I won't be collecting field samples, spending gratuitous time with members of my family, or sitting through boring lectures. Another known and obvious plus, John will be on holiday as well, so he gets nominated to do most of driving. Woot.

Potted plants and the necessity of cleanliness.

Well, the house is a mess. I haven't been cleaning, which I suppose has been caused by the spurt of freedom that I have been having from work as of late. Who knew, the price of time is complete inhibition with respect to household cleanliness? But I think the first step is having realized that I have kind of let everything go a little bit, so now I can move on, pull out a broom and sweep the mess away (metaphorically). The sad part, for me at least, is that everything hasn't completely fallen away and become messy or dirty; but instead, has fallen into this sort of cluttered disarray, where at first glance, everything seems okay, but in reality and at further inspection, there are these microcosms of chaos unlcean.

Now naturally, I am going to put most of the blame on John, who has come into season, bringing out the spinning wheel and clay from his workshop, to make all sorts of pottery. Now, the other side to this tale that I am less eager to tell, is that he's making the pottery at my bequest, so I don't have to spend exuberent amounts of money on this year's plant pots and containers. I somehow got it into my head, after reading far too many gardening and DIY magazines, that this year's gardening feat would be potted flowers and plants rather than the normal veggies and fruits that I go for (don't worry, I've still got plans for them too though). I started up all these different sprouts in the greenhouse, and I'm going to plant them in pots . . . that until John fires them, do not exist.

He's already started throwing them on the wheel and is planning to fire them sometime this weekend. Over the summer, while I was away in Europe, he added an entirely new installation to his workshop, so that he could unpack quite few of his old supplies that have been packed away since the move, however long ago.

Anyways, I'm excited. I get to start planting again, and well John gets to twiddle around with his gadgets in the workshop, win-win. Well, I suppose I should get to it with the cleaning and all. I'll think I'll work my way into it, starting by finding the table underneath all of my paperwork.

It's cloudy and raining, so naturally all I want to do is muck around outside.

As I was walking up the stairway to the front door this afternoon, I slipped on the flagstone stairway and fell down it. I've had this problem before, as falling seems to be my natural state, so during the fall I removed the large, thorny bushes at the bottom of the stair way that always seemed to stop my fall and provide sufficient thorny pain. However, after removal, I never though past what would stop my fall once I past the former bush threshold. This morning, I found out.

I tumbled down the twenty-so steps of the staircase, rolled about a meter to the former home of the thorny bushes, and began to pick up speed as I slid down the steep muddy hill in front of my house's entryway. When I finally came to a mucky stop at the bottom of the hill, I was covered in grass and mud could look up the spans of the hill seeing the now wet and disheveled spattering of my belongings. Thankfully most of my paperwork was dropped before it could be throw down the hill with me.

So now, I've showered, cleaned up all of my belongings, and turned on the Silver Jews. Over the weekend, or whenever chance comes that it has dried up a bit and is no longer raining, I'm planting new bushes, or at least something that will act to stop my falling motion. Maybe trees?

Sleeping in the Stacks.

I realized something today that I found oddly disturbing. In the five years that I have been living, breathing, and existing in the state that is my graduate student life here on campus, I have never been to the campus library, not a single one in the nearly 20 on campus. So yesterday, I left the office walked up the hill to the library door and walked through it to go and curl up in a forgotten corner somewhere. I was somehow transported through time back to the days when I was and undergraduate in Illinois and I would crawl into the stacks for the daily pleasure of naps and the smell of old worn books and dust. It was unnatural how easily I fell back into that routine.

The spot I found was on the fourth floor, east wing, among what I can only assume to have been the section on Asian literature, because all of books seemed to be written in Mandarin. I curled up and got cozy in the worn desk that I would assume hadn't been used by another person in a few months due to the fine layer of dust coating it. Then I put on some music, something aptly appropriate from my younger college days, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. Then, I, almost poetically as if being drawn from the past, fell asleep.

Unnerved by Shifty Glances.

Tomorrow I will finally be free. For the past week, I have been playing, rather uncomfortably, the role of hostess for John's parents. They have been staying with us for the week and will thankfully be leaving early tomorrow morning to go back to St. Louis. It's not that I don't or didn't enjoy having them stay with us, but honestly they kind of put me on edge. John, the assimilated son of Scandinavian immigrants, doesn't understand my unease, because to him his mother is just as any other mother. However, in reality, when he is away a work, and I am impressed on with the task of entertaining, she spends her waking hours berating me in broken English on the exact nature of our relationship. Then, after a hard questioning, she relays her take on our conversations to his father in foreign tongue, while they both exchange shifty glances in my direction. And of course, naturally, John just smiles and laughs when I relay these occurrences to him in the privacy of night after the elderly Hagebaks have gone to sleep. It's unnerving, to say the least.

Back to the Homeland.

John and I are catching the flight home tomorrow, and naturally, I'm kind of not looking forward to it. Going back to a life, filled with greater levels of stress and anxiety than I have experienced the past week, somehow causes great pain in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I just expecting the eventual work-overload that will inevitably befall me in the closing months of the semester. For now though, I will live in the moment, anticipating the great joy of airport. I can only guess how many mixed passages I will read while leaning over strangers shoulders. Forecast for tomorrow: a blend of economic newspapers, dishy magazines, and the elusive, ever popular, romance fantasy.